


Connecting the Stars (They Only Make Sense Looking Back)

by justanoutherfangirl



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff, Romantic Soulmates, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-02-27 13:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13249278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanoutherfangirl/pseuds/justanoutherfangirl
Summary: This is basically a slow burn Bellarke soulmates AU where the name of your soulmate appears on your wrist when you turn 21. Heaps more to come!





	1. Chapter 1

 

If there was a way to describe the way that people felt the night before their 21st birthdays – the night before they found out the name of their soulmate – it was excited. Not a relaxed excitement, the indulgent kind you feel taking a younger brother to the movies, or pulling a new recipe out of the oven. It also wasn’t the expectant excitement of birthdays, fuelled by the knowledge that tomorrow you could pretend that tomorrow really was all about you – the assumption that tomorrow would be better, magical. It wasn’t even the powerful excitement of new experiences, of stepping off flights into bitter cold, of smiling into a first kiss.

 

No. It was fearful excitement.

 

The closest thing that Clarke had experienced was turning over an assessment to see her grade in a subject she’d struggled in. It was a sickening mixture of hope (she’d worked hard, she’d be rewarded, she was smart, and she _really_ wanted an A) and dread (a C was a conversation she was not particularly hoping to have with her mother, per se). The key difference, however, was that the night before her birthday, the pain was drawn out.

 

Clarke couldn’t sleep. She knew that she wouldn’t find out until the actual minute she had been born, 21 years before. Still, she felt ill with fear and hope and _excitement_.

 

Her parents felt the same, she knew. They were both hoping that the name to appear on her wrist in the morning would be Wells Jaha, followed within 24 hours by her name appearing on his wrist. (Their mothers had been in the same mothers' group, before they became neighbours when the kids were 7.) Clarke thought that Abby hoped in equal measure for the tinge of power associated with Mayor Thelonious’s last name as well as for the cuteness of the boy-and-girl-next-door story, without a real thought as to what would make Clarke happy. Her father, however, wanted it to be Wells because he knew the boy. Wells would look after the woman whom Jake still thought of as his baby. Clarke sometimes wondered if he was ready to know for sure who she would spend the rest of her life with – Jake had spent so long clinging to the image of his baby that Clarke wondered if he’d missed her mature into a woman: a woman ready to trust, to love, to live as an adult, soulmate tattoo and all.  

 

As for Clarke?

 

He was six months younger than her though, so she didn’t know. Couldn’t know, until 7:13 am tomorrow.

 

It was killing her.

 

***

 

Even the steadiest, most unflappable, struggle the night before their 21st birthday.

 

Although Bellamy’s 21st was 6 years behind him, he could still remember clearly the hope and fear and longing that came with it. He remembered the way his younger sister, then still in her senior year and only a few days shy of 16, had teased him mercilessly for weeks beforehand. The way she’d woken at 5:30 am and bounded into his room to sit beside him on his tiny single bed and wait the final 8 minutes with him. The way he himself had woken for the 11th time at 3 am and not been able to get back to sleep. The way he’d hoped for Gina’s name, for the guarantee of an easy, safe future with her.

 

More than anything else, he remembered the way that, at 5:38 am, exactly 21 years after his birth, his arm had burned for a moment, and a name had appeared in beautiful cursive over the soft skin of his wrist. It had been as though one of the old Roman gods, perhaps Venus herself, had been tracing the name.

 

Octavia squealed. Bellamy cried out in surprise and pain. Before either of them finished, it was over, and Bellamy’s future was there for all to see.

 

_Clarke Griffin_

Although he would never admit it, he remembered clearly how he and Octavia had cried together.  


	2. Chapter 2

Clarke had an alarm set for 7:10 that morning. All her friends, and the online posts she’d read warned that it would hurt for a moment or two, and that she’d see the name appearing on her skin. That was what frightened her more than anything else – something marking her, someone claiming her without having met her.

 

The three minutes she had to wait that morning were torturous. They burned through her mind, unbearably slow. They stoked the sickness clambering over her stomach, they dried her mouth. She started counting down the seconds, to see if that would hustle them along. It did not. Then, somehow, despite staring at her phone clock with epic intensity, she missed the split second when it happened. When the number was finally 7:13.

 

Everyone had been right; the pain was intense. It seared at her skin, itching and stinging, but it was, as promised, over quickly. The moment she’d waited for -  feared - for her whole life - was over. She’d longed for it when she was little, watching Princesses find the names of mysterious Princes and fearful Beasts written on their wrists. She’d hoped for it against her will as a quietly rebellious teenager. And now it was done.

 

_Bellamy Blake_

The name was foreign to her. She didn’t even know if it was masculine or feminine (she was suddenly horrified on behalf of all the other bi kids that got stuck with an Alex). She whispered it to herself, finding that she liked how it moved through her mouth – starting at the lips, moving deeper and ending with a sigh. She tried to imagine them. Would they be her age? Younger? Older? Taller than her – not that it was hard – or short? Wide awake by then, she looked up the first name ‘Bellamy’, on Google, but was only introduced to a company of whole foods for babies. Changing the search terms, she discovered that not only was it a French name, but that it meant ‘handsome’. Now, all that she could hope would be that he would be just that (and kind, too).

 

She stared at her wrist a little longer. The tattoo itself was beautiful, she thought. It was in dark blue ink, in cursive writing that reminded her of the almost unreadable scrawl used in the Magna Carta – old and neat and cramped. Some people believed that the style of the tattoo was an indicator of the personality of the soulmate, but more believed it meant nothing. Others didn’t believe in soulmates at all, claiming that people ended up together out of a sense of duty. Clarke still wasn’t entirely sure, but she was certain that the name itself mattered. Bellamy Blake. Finally, she looked him up on Facebook but found nothing at all – a bunch of randoms who didn’t seem to be in even nearly the right age bracket. Clearly, he had better privacy protections than she did, and there was hardly a reason for them to have any mutual friends. He was a true mystery. Still, it was nice – nice not to know what was coming for her, exactly.

 

Then, with a start, she remembered she should message Wells. She strongly suspected he’d been hoping for her name to appear on his wrist tomorrow at 4:48 pm, so she wanted to give him at least a warning. Besides, he was her best friend. If the whole situation between them hadn’t been made weird in the last few weeks by these tattoos, she’d be dying to tell him anyway.

 

CG: Not you – sorry, I know that’s what you were hoping for.

CG: Some rando called Bellamy Blake.

 

She waited only 30 seconds for the reply.

 

WJ: It’s okay! I’m gonna be fine.

WJ: What sort of a name is Bellamy, anyway? Is he foreign?

CG: Idk maybe – it’s French? I’m always here for you btw

WJ: I know – we’ll talk later. Your parents will be dying by now haha

 

After considering pushing him further, she decided to leave it. She knew exactly what the problem was, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Not to mention that he was right. Her Mum would be preparing to have a fit, considering that it was now 7:25, and the fact that Clarke’s parents would have woken up only minutes after her. It was time, she realised. They deserved to know.   


They were sitting in the living room in their pyjamas, which reminded her of Christmas mornings. Except this time, it hadn’t been Clarke’s untameable excitement which roused them. Instead, it had been their own nervous hope (and an alarm set for 7:15). They watched her enter the room silently, and Clarke found that she couldn’t read their expressions at all – they were holding their cards close. She sat down opposite them, the way she had in 8th grade when her math score had dipped into B territory, much like Marie Antoinette awaiting the guillotine. Only, this time, they were waiting for her.

 

“Morning, sweetheart.” Her father smiled after a few seconds of silence. “It’s pretty early, huh?”

 

Abby ignored his attempt at tact and simply muttered. “Well?”

 

Clarke remained silent.

 

“What’s wrong, pumpkin? Didn’t you get a tattoo?” Jakes weak jibe trailed off into a nervous chuckle. Still, it made Clarke smile. Helped her extend her wrist for her parents to see.

 

“It’s not Wells. I’m sorry, I know you wanted that.” Jake’s face fell a little, as did Abby’s. But to their credit, both rallied after a moment and lent forward to read their daughters future.

 

“Bellamy Blake?” Abby tried it, and apparently – unlike Clarke – did not like the way it tasted. “We don’t know a Bellamy, do we?”

 

Jake shook his head in answer. “How are you feeling, Clarke?”

 

“Fine, I ‘spose.” She smiled. “It’s nice, actually. Not to know quite yet. No need to have a very awkward conversation with anyone. Plus, at least I found out this way, not by some random dude introducing themselves as my soulmate.”

 

“That, my dear, is very true.” Jake smiled amiably, but Clarke could see a little pain in his eyes. That was _exactly_ how he’d introduced himself to Abby, after their shared statistics class, and it was something he’d eventually come to regret. Abby hadn’t been 21, and so hadn’t had her tattoo yet, and so had been wary of trusting him until her own birthday. At that point, however, she’d finally realised that the strange boy who wouldn’t stop insisting that she had to be the one was, in fact, the one. Abby smiled too, but her smile was softer. Despite the first few months of rebuffing him, Jake was always her soft spot.

 

The morning ended with smiles and pancakes, just like all her birthdays had in the past. If Abby was distracted, it was only because she couldn’t protect her daughter anymore – she’d have to start to let her go, be the grown woman she’d become (completely against Abby’s will). If Jake studied Clarke a little too closely, it was only because he didn’t want her to feel any pain at the hands of this Bellamy, this stranger. He knew, statistically, that nothing would go wrong, but he feared the power of the outlier on his daughter. He worried, that morning, more than he ever had in his life, that his daughter’s soulmate would manage to damage her. There were stories out there of soulmates who never met, or who met in uncomfortable settings. Stories that were little better than down-right ugly. Jake just didn’t want his little girl to be caught up in one of them.

 

***

 

The few months which remained of Clarke’s school year passed easily. Wells was woken in the night by the sharp pain of Roma Bragg’s name tattooing itself onto his wrist. Her name appeared in thin white lines, the font similar to careful handwriting. It suited him, and Clarke was sure that when he found her (Likely when he went to grad school in London in the fall) Roma, whoever she was, would suit him too.

 

The only real disruption had been Finn, who’d continued to work very hard to get into Clarke’s pants as the semester ended. Eventually, she’d let him, and it’d been a fine enough night – but she knew he wasn’t her soulmate, and he’d somehow lost a little of his shine. He lost _all_ of his shine when his long distance (and long-term) girlfriend showed up from California to celebrate his 21 st. Clarke had bumped into them when Raven had come to collect Finn after one of their shared classes, and it must have been reasonably obvious from Clarke’s horrified expression what had happened. To Clarke’s relief, he’d rocked up to class four days later with a name that wasn’t Raven’s on his wrist in jagged red ink, and Raven had messaged her on Facebook to inform her that she and Finn were done, and that ‘you seem cool though wanna be friends?’. Clarke had indeed wanted to be friends, and it was pronounced to be so forever more over brunch three days (and a number of brushed-aside apologies) later. By the end of summer, they had realised they were actually going to the same city (Boston) for school in the fall, and had become close enough to share a small apartment there together.

 

Bellamy Blake, whoever he was, still hadn’t managed to appear on the scene. Although Clarke often found herself staring at her tattoo, or rubbing it when she was nervous, she began to relax again. For the first few weeks she’d lived in a state of almost heightened attention, but when she and Raven started to pack up their things she was no longer listening for his name all the time. No longer waiting impatiently for him to saunter into her life. She’d essentially put him aside for grad school, or even later. Bellamy Blake had his only little box in her mind, and it was certainly filled with dreams of perfect meetings and love at first sight – but the box, by this stage, had found its way into storage. Even Jake and Abby had started to relax again, no longer tempted to go up to strange young men on the street and demand from them their names, nor to read the name of every patient in the hospital where Abby worked, scanning for a tell-tale ‘B’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!!
> 
> This is a bit longer, but I know that Clarke and Bellamy haven't even met yet!! Don't worry though, I promise that it's going to happen next chapter!
> 
> As always, Kudos and Comments mean the world xx


	3. Chapter 3

“Bell!”

 

Bellamy ignored his sister. Again.

 

“Bell! Bellamy! Bell-end! Hello? Earth to brother? BELL!” Realising that Octavia would persist to call until he obeyed her summons, he finally hauled himself off the couch and began to head up the hall to his sister’s room.

 

“What, O?”

 

She threw him a filthy look in repayment for his slow movements as well as for his unimpressed tone. “I need your help.” Suddenly, she smiled dazzlingly. “Can you please read over this essay for me?”

 

“Is it for the mythology class? Or your major?” Although he did sometimes read over her essays and reports for her major, which was in sports physiology, he hated it with a burning passion. Besides, he didn’t understand a word, so he was just looking for grammatical errors. It was dull.

 

“It’s for classics. Please? It’s got Mars in it?”

 

“It’s on the Roman Pantheon?”

 

“Yep!” She handed him the essay (already printed – clearly, she’d been certain of a victory), and swivelled her wheelie chair away from him. However, to stop the tirade Bellamy had automatically inhaled to deliver about not taking him for granted (A lecture given often, even though it made him happy she felt like she could rely on him), she tossed another smile over her shoulder. Immediately torn between sighing and laughing, he settled for a small smile of his own before returning to his seat on the couch.

 

As it turned out, the essay was not specifically on the Roman Pantheon, and Mars was mentioned only in passing. Still, it was good, and Bellamy returned it a few hours later with only minimal underlines. Having read his sister’s essay, he set to grading the essays which had piled up intimidatingly over the week – despite it only being the third week of the semester, there were already kids handing in random stuff that he, as the favourite TA, was handed to mark. He liked it though – it provided a welcome distraction from working on his PhD thesis (Based on, of course, the role of Greco-Roman Mythology in the modern world). Besides, he was lucky – his classes, along with the marking he did, meant that he was paid fairly well. He’d like to pretend that the money didn’t mean anything to him, but it had paid for both his and Octavia’s food since they’d moved to Boston two years ago to escape the hard memories of their mother. He would have loved to send Octavia to a college where she could live on campus, but the savings involved in keeping her at home had been too great to justify. Octavia never seemed to mind, either. She was always making friends. In fact, Bellamy could barely keep track of them all anymore. The stoner kid, the nerd stoner kid… it’d all gotten too difficult. But he liked all of them anyway.

 

He was only halfway through the third essay (Which was, for future reference, abysmal) when he got a call from Murphy. Although the conversation was short, Bellamy was able to gather that he’d met ‘an amazingly hot chick’ who was working as a nurse in the University-affiliated hospital. Murphy essentially wanted to appear at the hospital to ask her out, and wanted to ‘rough’ Bellamy up for the purpose.

 

“Only a little, though, man. I’ll go gentle, and besides, there’s nothing the girls find hotter than a guy with a healing shiner, huh?”

 

“If that’s the case, _man_ , why don’t I rough you up a little?”

 

“You don’t have the heart for it. You’ll go soft and she’ll laugh at me.”

 

“Call Miller and see if you can convince him to go with your incredibly dumb plan.”

 

“You suck.”

 

Bellamy hung up after that. Maybe three minutes later, Miller himself called, to both laugh at Murphy and to invite Bellamy out drinking with him and his boyfriend ‘and Murphy, to keep him out of trouble.’. Despite knowing that the last thing he needed was to spend money on booze and get nothing done, Bellamy agreed. Shouting something of the sort up to Octavia, he pulled a clean shirt over his head and wandered out the door – notable only because he proved incapable of successfully doing both at once, and ended up standing outside topless for about 5 seconds in the gathering dusk before he had successfully completed his mission.

 

***

 

“I _hate_ working with the civil engineering kids, Clarke!” Raven had returned to moaning about her favourite topic of the week – apparently, her impending doom. Clarke preferred to think of it as an upcoming group assignment where the aeronautical engineering majors and the civil engineering majors were likely to have to work together in their shared class. The two groups made a point of never getting along, which was the main reason Raven had taking to whingeing so much about the whole thing.

 

“So I’ve heard.”

 

“You suck. What’s the point of having a roomie if she refuses to commiserate with me?”

 

Clarke’s response was what she considered to be the absolute height of eloquence. She stuck out her tongue and went back to making her notes for the week. Raven watched her for a minute, collecting her own stuff for the week as though she too was going to make notes. Then, she huffed and threw all of it on her desk. “No, Clarke. We are not doing work this afternoon. We worked last week, we only had a little look around on our first damn week and I want to party!”

 

“Okay. Do you want help picking out an outfit?” Clarke didn’t even look up from the anatomy sketch she was halfway through.

 

“AHHHH! No, I want you to come with me and have fun! You’re working too hard.”

 

“I’m a med student. That’s literally impossible.” But Clarke was finally looking up and had even begun tidying up her stationery. Raven grinned in victory, and the two women began picking out outfits from their small cupboards. It took way too long to be worth the effort, but Clarke enjoyed the process. She eventually ended up in a cute blue dress with a swooping neckline and a slight spin in the skirt. Raven was apparently feeling bold and as a result wore a pair of high-waisted shorts and a top that was essentially made for the specific purpose of covering her bra, and not a square millimetre more. In Clarke’s opinion, they made a hot pair. A smear of eyeliner and mascara later they’d started for the bar Raven had heard was _the_ place in the area for grad students from their school.

 

It was just starting to get dark – not too dark for Clarke to miss a very attractive (obscenely attractive) torso wrestle with his shirt just outside his front door – which Raven immediately commented on her staring at. “You should tap _that_!”. The whisper was only meant in fun, and Clarke knew that, but for whatever reason it had rubbed her the wrong way and turned her into a grouch. It didn’t help that said torso stayed within earshot of them for at least 30 seconds before ducking down a side street. Clarke had been hyper-aware of him, embarrassment morphing into shame. Shame quickly shifted into frustration, which Clarke then turned on Raven. It was easier that way. Despite Clarke’s sullen mood, they arrived quickly.  

 

“Dropship? More like Drop-kick, Raven. This place is a massive dive.”

 

“You’re just in a bad mood because I called you out on liking the look of that torso!” Raven was smiling, apparently running on enough excitement to deal with Clarke’s immediate bristling.

 

“That’s not the problem. Look at it, Raven!”

 

In Clarke’s defence, the place didn’t look overly appealing. The place was terribly rundown on the outside. Its ugly grey paint was peeling away in great swathes, and the windows were grimy looking. All in all, the Dropship gave out a very _sticky_ vibe. As a result, the two women were standing maybe five meters from the entrance (a thick set of double doors painted in stripes with what would have once been a collection of bright yellows and reds, but was now, much like the windows, slowly turning brown.) debating internally as well as externally about whether it was worth just finding another bar.

 

Finally, Raven made her decision. “Well, we’re here. We may as well head inside, have a drink and see if it’s as ugly in there as out here.”

 

Clarke was not overly pleased by this development. “Or we could just go somewhere nicer? Mt. Weather is supposed to be okay?”

 

“Mt. Weather is for dickheads with more money than sense and more sense than style.”

 

“Fine. One drink.” She turned and marched towards the door.

 

“Wait. Clarke – Suddenly… I don’t know, I’m suddenly not sure this is a good idea.” Raven sounded genuinely concerned, and Clarke spun immediately back to her friend’s side.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“A second ago this all seemed genius and now I’m – not so sure? Like I just feel like this is momentous for some godforsaken reason.”

 

That, Clarke understood. As soon as she had taken a definitive step towards the door she’d felt drawn in, as though there was a magnet just beyond the threshold. She could still feel it, this incredible _tug_ onwards. Interestingly, it made her feel strong. It also made her tattoo prickle.

 

“I hear you. But I'm not sure it's bad... You know what? I think we _should_ get a drink here. If only so we both realise how dumb we’re being and so that we don't have to a walk of shame to another bar after deliberating outside for ten years.” Clarke smiled, finding it suddenly easy to do so. Raven nodded, and they began towards the door a second time. The tug was still there, but quieter, as though Clarke had appeased it by choosing to go in.

 

She opened the door, took a steadying breath, and walked in, feeling the tug vanish.

 

***

 

Bellamy had ducked down a side street quickly after leaving his house. He’d been walking behind two girls – likely headed to the Dropship too, although they were still close enough to Mt Weather to change their minds – but he could tell his presence was uncomfortable for them. The blonde one was basically shooting him daggers from 20 meters in front of him. Bellamy decided quickly he didn’t need that in his life. Besides, it was actually quicker if he went down the winding route at his pace.

 

It’d taken him maybe five minutes to arrive, stride in (Utterly unperturbed by the décor)  find Miller, Murphy and Miller’s new boyfriend, Bryan. Bellamy actually quite liked Bryan. He had a kindness to him that Bellamy thought suited Miller to a T. To be fair, they were also soul mates, according to the tattoos on their wrists. Which had played no small part in why Bellamy had remembered Bryan’s name so easily… Miller had only been thrusting it under Bellamy’s nose for the last 3 years. Three minutes after that, Bellamy was nursing a beer and playing a game of pool – in which he was being soundly thrashed by Miller and Bryan. Murphy had wandered off with the intention of doing shots, but Bellamy suspected he wouldn’t go through with it this early in the night.

 

He’d just taken a particularly lousy shot when he felt his tattoo sting, as though he’d dragged it against a piece of sandstone instead of letting it brush the silky wood of the pool table. He swore under his breath, which earned him a disapproving look from Miller. His tattoo was fine, even though it still stung. There was no visible damage, so he brushed it aside as just being oversensitive because it was a scar. Or maybe it was because his birthday had only been a few weeks before (he’d just turned 24). It wasn’t common, but for the first decade or so, the tats could get sensitive around birthdays. Bellamy ignored it.

 

A few minutes later he noticed the blond and brunette pair he’d been behind on the street before. The blonde was a tad overdressed for the Dropship – maybe that was why she seemed to have such a stick up her butt. The brunette, however… that he could get behind. She was clearly the more relaxed of the two and seemed fairly quiet (and was pretty hot). Although he had to admit his first preference would be the blonde, the brunette struck him as more receptive to his advances. He was suddenly looking for a conquest, even though he hadn’t really been living the one-night-stand life of late. It also hadn't been why he'd come out tonight. Still, he nodded to Miller, signalling his intentions. Miller, true to form, rolled his eyes.

 

Bellamy sauntered over to the (somewhat conspicuous) pair. “Hi there, can I trouble you for your name? Or maybe what kind of drink you’d like?” It wasn’t his best, but he was out of practice.

 

“A tequila shot. And I don’t give out my name that easy, buddy.”

 

Bellamy ordered three – he knew he should be polite to the blonde one, who was watching him very…intently. She was putting him off his game.

 

“Maybe not. But I’m not really looking for my soulmate tonight.” He smiled, turning up the charm. He was still feeling the hard eyes of the blonde girl digging into him and was determined to prove that although his intentions were dishonourable, he would at least be good about it.

 

“Forward.” The brunette was smiling back. Clearly, she knew how to be charming herself.

 

“That’s the idea.” He allowed his words to hang between them, allowing the insinuation to well and truly sink in. He went to whisper in Raven’s ear, but accidentally made direct eye contact with the blonde and had to settle for coughing to cover his discomfort. The brunette raked her eyes over him - from head to toe, so slowly he felt almost indecent in public. He let her finish without comment and tried not to notice the disapproval of her friend. It was proving difficult. 

 

“I’m Raven.” She finally shoved her phone his way. “Add your number and depending on how I’m feeling in a few hours, I’ll send you a text.”

 

Bellamy obliged her, winking when he tossed the phone back. “Hopefully I’ll see you later.” But to his surprise, he found he didn’t really want to, after all. Not unless she suddenly had cold blue eyes and what was probably already a healthy hatred of him. 

 

He was going insane. At least it seemed like he could bet on that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a while! And I know, they still haven't really met yet - but idk I'm just really enjoying dragging it out. 
> 
> Promise it won't be much longer before they get over themselves xx

**Author's Note:**

> I know that's super short, but I'm just getting back into writing after a super busy year last year! 
> 
> Hopefully you guys like it - comments and kudos mean the world!! xx


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